Ulysses

Ulysses (i.e. Greek Odysseus), chieftain of Ithaca, one of the Greek heroes in the Trojan War, in which he was with difficulty persuaded to join, but in which, however, he did good service both by his courage and his counsels; he is less famed for what he did before Troy than for what befell him in his ten years' wandering homeward after, as recorded by Homer in a separate poem called after him the “Odyssey” (q.v.), which relates his stay among the lotus-eaters (q.v.), his encounter with Polyphemus (q.v.), the enchantments of Circe (q.v.), the Sirens (q.v.), and Calypso (q.v.), and his shipwreck, &c. Tennyson represents him as impatient of the humdrum life of Ithaca on his return, and as longing to join his Trojan comrades in the Isles of the Blessed. See Penelope and Telemachus.

Definition taken from The Nuttall Encyclopædia, edited by the Reverend James Wood (1907)